- Richard Stack
- New Haven, CT
- United States
This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Improving female literacy in the maternal language as a significant contribution to helping women to control their fertility
Literacy is the ability to decode and encode the language you already know. In the "advanced" world it is taken for granted. In the "Third World" it is not; most established institutions insisting on teaching the lingua franca, or the colonial language, or English, rather than the languages people actually speak..
This practice produces an inevitably secondrate literacy, (and thus an underclass,) for all but the most gifted and wealthy, for it involves learning a new language at the same time as alphabetical coding and decoding, rather than, as in the developed world, one AFTER the other,
Making the transition to literacy in a language you don't ALREADY know is a mistake, since it abandons the obvious idea that you can hear what you are reading. It means that you are condemned to exerting yourself at great length to master the colonial/national language and its systems, or to flounder about in a language of which you know only the most rudimentary parts, and probably none of the idioms, thus permanently marking out your "class" and making any real literacy in that language highly unlikely
Female literacy is, as much research shows, the SOLE conistent correlate to drops in fertility. Worldwide, they march together (see Connelly, Fatal Misconception, a magisterial history of the brutal, forcible and misguided efforts by governments and NGOs at birth control).
The answer, then, for those .concerned to remedy the disempowerment of a large proportion of women in relation to family planning, is to promote literacy in the maternal language, the mother tongue. And, therefore, to devise a program readily translatable into ANY alphabetic language, to be offered to women who show up to neo-natal clinics, designed so that any native speaker of the given language could readily supply the local elements of the program. This program would spread (like TED) like wildfire.
It would be a perfect embodiment of the global mission of the Gates Foundation.
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Gail . 50+
Education always helps - let there be no question. Literacy is part of that, and literacy in any language is a good thing. BUT, if you are being taught lies and misinformation in any language, you haven't taken much of a step just by teaching literacy.
Nearly 30 years ago, my worldview crashed, and I was left knowing that I needed a replacement. I also knew that I wasn't sufficiently educated to do so, so I began to educate myself. This was before the Internet, so I became very familiar with my local library and book stores. One part of my education included being well-read, so I joined a book club that offered the 100 greatest books. After about 20 books, I realized that the list was obviously written by men, because all the books painted a rather dim view of women. Had I not been educating myself in other fields at the same time, I would never have been able to even recognize that I was being systematically disempowered - not only through the use of literature, but through cultural (and legal) programming.
By the time my education got around to understanding the various economic models that are possible, I learned how our current (global) economic model CREATES the problems that we are spending money trying to fix. It did so in order to maintain the illusion (lie) that it serves us. It was the economic model that had been enslaving me without my conscious awareness.
I conclude by saying that unless information is honest, literacy helps little. We need people encouraging others to educate themselves at the most basic levels. Literacy = 1.
Richard Stack
My notion of maternal literacy is, as you point out, no panacea, though I believe it could make a contribution.
particularly in the context of clinics in very rural parts of Africa (which remain very multi-lingual) and, say, Pakistan. .
Although it is rather a dense historical book, I also recommend - around the issue of birth control (as distinct from controlling one's own fertility via family planning ) - Connelly's Fatal Misconception. It deals with the ghastly and brutal birth-control movement of the later 20th century. He also indicates that it was largely the work of the neo-feminists of the seventies which put a stop to it. . . He also documents the connection between family planning and literacy.
.
Gail . 50+
In the meantime, I could spend far less time going about teaching mothers who are holding their infants who are dying of malnutrition and thirst (because milk has dried up) about birth control. I don't need them to be literate to understand the relevance of that.
Before you can expect to improve female literacy, you have to fix the system that imprisons them. Though we know HOW to do that, it's a well-guarded secret among those in the higher echalons of the hierarchy of every culture.
Literacy can be a 2-headed monster. Lacking good reading material,missionaries may come and say that the Bible is the only readable book and it says that women are to be silent and submissive - or they will go to hell. How do you explain to an African villager why quantum mechanics is essential knowledge?
I'm all for literacy, and I'm all for birth control on this planet that has already exceeded its ability to sustain our numbers. But what works in Appalachia doesn't work in the places you speak of until there is a willingness on the part of the slave owners to allow the slaves to be educated. They know, just as American slave holders knew, that education is a threat to slavery.
How do you intend do get around that conundrum?
Thx 4 the book suggestions. Will look into.
Richard Stack
J M
Richard Stack
The answer: because, surprise, surprise, it turns out that they are actually human beings !
J M
Everybody is a human being. Says nothing; typical political talk.
Children are "human beings" Should they be in charge of the everyone's sex lives? Health? Child rearing protocols? Big picture decision making?
Children are already protected and provided for. (If they were females --rather than children-- they would be the cause of everyone's' competition too.) What do they need "agency" for? For what purpose? So they can make it more difficult for the protector
class and competing classes?
La Vergne Rosow
Are you perhaps suggesting that the reader must be prepared to challenge the content of a text, while at the same time working to fully understand the intent of the author?